“This is the burial place of the Apis bulls. See, here lies the last, not yet closed in,” and holding up her lamp she revealed a mighty sarcophagus of black granite set in a niche of the mausoleum.
“So they make mummies of bulls as well as of men,” groaned Bes. “Oh! what a land. But when I have seen the holy Tanofir it was in a brick cell beneath the sky.”
“Doubtless that was at night, O Bes,” answered Karema, “for in such a house he sleeps, spending his days in the Apis tomb, because of all the evil that is worked beneath the sun.”
“Hump,” said Bes, “I should have thought that more was worked beneath the moon, but doubtless the holy Tanofir knows better, or being asleep does not mind.”
Now in front of each of the walled-up niches was a little chapel, and at the fourth of these whence a light came, the maiden stopped, saying,
“Enter. Here dwells the holy Tanofir. He tended this god during its life-days in his youth, and now that the god is dead he prays above its bones.”
“Prays to the bones of a dead bull in the dark! Well, give me a live grasshopper in the light; he is more cheerful,” muttered Bes.
“O Dwarf,” cried a deep and resounding voice from within the chapel, “talk no more of things you do not understand. I do not pray to the bones of a dead bull, as you in your ignorance suppose. I pray to the spirit whereof this sacred beast was but one of the fleshly symbols, which in this haunted place you will do well not to offend.”
Then for once I saw Bes grow afraid, for his great jaw dropped and he trembled.
“Master,” he said to me, “when next you visit tombs where maidens look into your heart and hermits hear your very thoughts, I pray you leave me behind. The holy Tanofir I love, if from afar, but I like not his house, or his——” Here he looked at Karema who was regarding him with a sweet smile over the lamp flame, and added, “There is something the matter with me, Master; I cannot even lie.”